


Retail Therapy

by stardustandswimmingpools



Category: Glee
Genre: Brotherly Love, Coda, Episode: s02e03 Coda, Episode: s02e03 Grilled Cheesus, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Not Slash, Slight Canon Divergence, anyway, i guess there's comfort, in regards to kurt's clothes, inspired by him wearing that hoodie in the first part of the ep, wow glee is so popular it gets its own coda tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 12:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15663012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustandswimmingpools/pseuds/stardustandswimmingpools
Summary: Kurt sits on the edge of his bed and stares at his dresser.-Coda for 2x03 (Grilled Cheesus).





	Retail Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> i have like a shitload of glee fanfiction that i pretty much binge-wrote the first time i watched it, but i never actually finished the show (stopped watching after finn/cory died) so i didn't feel like i could post it. but i'm doing a rewatch now and i've decided enough with the bullshit - i like some of the stuff i've written! so i'm posting it.  
> this one is not from my first Glee experience; i wrote it immediately after rewatching Grilled Cheesus after my heart broke from it. as much as i ship finn/kurt, this fic is not a slash or pre-slash fic. I wanted to explore to idea of them as tentative brotherly figures, so here we are!

Kurt sits on the edge of his bed and stares at his dresser.

It should be easy. It always has been. Getting dressed is more automatic than intentional recently, just attentive enough to carefully wear clothes with a lesser value in the mornings, primed for slushie-ing. He knows how to get dressed. He knows how to wear clothes. He does.

He stares at his dresser for another minute.

It stares back, resolute.

And Kurt feels a little bit broken. Like someone took a pane of glass and shattered it, and stuffed all the cracked pieces and sharp edges into Kurt’s body. Careless that he might bleed.

His eyes are misting, and that can't happen. He can't cry now. He needs to get ready to go to school. Just like he did yesterday, and the day before.

His door shakes with two knocks, delivered by someone who, after seventeen years, still doesn't quite know the measure of his brute strength.

“Kurt?”

Kurt blinks.

“Hey, man, you okay? You haven't left your room this morning and I know your hair routine only takes fifteen minutes.”

The handle twists, and Finn steps into the room. Kurt wants to turn and look at him; he wants to pretend, effortlessly, that everything is fantastic. 

“Kurt?” Finn says gently. “We still need to go to school, you know.”

But he can't look away from his dresser, still threatening him. It  _ wants  _ him to get dressed and be on his merry way. It wants him to act like everything is normal.

Act like everything is fine, even though his dad could die at any moment.

“Uh, Kurt? Say something.”

Finn sits down on the bed next to him.

His dad could die at any moment and  _ he wouldn't know. _

Kurt turns, gives a last heroic attempt at smiling the pain away, and starts sobbing.

“Woah,” says Finn, and then there's an arm around his shoulder, and Finn is making weird soothing sounds that aren't working. “Hey, hey, Kurt, it's gonna be okay.”

Kurt buries his face in Finn’s shirt and makes a mental note to buy him a new one. His heart feels like it’s being prodded with a white-hot iron. And there's an ache in his chest that  _ hurts,  _ it hurts, and whenever he thinks about it he cries harder.

Finn is a good friend. He sits there and takes it.

“I can't get dressed,” Kurt blubbers, like a hopeless fool.

Finn is probably making an expression of great confusion. “Why not? Your clothes are all right there.”

“I can't,” Kurt manages, and presses his face into Finn’s chest, feeling weak and a little ridiculous. “Just. Not my clothes. It's. It would be wrong.”

“Okay — okay,” Finn says. He gets a mental gold star for _ putting up with the most shit. _ Kurt feels someone stab his heart — this must be real pain, it must be physically happening, because nothing emotional could hurt so much — and Finn squeezes his shoulders reassuringly. “Um...you can wear my clothes, okay? I know I'm kinda way bigger than you but the only person I know in your size is Rachel and I think she mostly has dresses and skirts. Not that you can't wear that stuff, I just, sort of assumed you didn't want to...do you want to? Because I can —”

“No,” Kurt croaks, from the depths of his despair and Finn’s t-shirt. “Your clothes are fine.”

The truth is that Finn’s clothes are so far below Kurt’s standard of living they aren't even on the chart. But.

Finn is here. And Kurt's dad is not. And everything else has gone to shit anyway.

“Okay, I...I gotta get up to go get you them, alright? Just — just hang tight.”

Kurt nods weakly. Finn stands up, pats his shoulder awkwardly, and then leaves. 

He returns a few minutes later, holding a plain blue shirt that might be optimistically three sizes too big and a gray hoodie that is of equal stature.

“You won't fit any of my jeans,” he says apologetically. “Sorry. And I know these are probably too big but...I don't know.”

Kurt swallows and wipes viciously at his eyes with his hand. “Thanks,” he says in a whisper.

Finn hands him the clothes, but Kurt doesn't stand.

“You, uh...you have to put them on,” Finn says.

Kurt nods and stays put.

He’s thinking the necessary commands to get dressed. He's thinking:  _ put on Finn’s clothes and go do your hair. _ But the message must be getting lost before it can reach his limbs, and they just sit, limp and useless.

Finn sits next to him on the bed and puts his arm back around Kurt. It's strange how easily they fit, not as boyfriends but as brothers, and how quickly Kurt has adapted to this new position suddenly filled in his life. He leans into Finn.

“When I was little, my mom had this chest of...stuff,” Finn starts. “Army stuff that my dad used to wear. Plus some other things he had. You know, shirts, shoes, sweatpants, that kind of thing. It was kind of...hidden away. I guess she didn't want me to find it. Maybe she didn't want to look at it. I did anyway, though. And whenever I felt sad or lost or whatever, I’d go through the box and put on my dad’s clothes and...they were huge on me. I mean, I looked like I was wearing a dress. But it made me feel safer, wearing his stuff. Like I was protected. By his spirit or something. I don't know.”

Kurt squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself not to cry again. Finn taps his fingers against Kurt’s shoulder.

“Why are you telling me this,” Kurt says in a low voice. He can't manage higher; it'll crack.

“I guess...if you feel super lost today, you'll at least be wearing my clothes. I'll protect you. You know. Spiritually. Or whatever. I guess that’s weird. I didn't think you would want to wear your dad’s stuff, since he's not dead.” And he says it with such confidence, too. Like he knows for a fact. “I just want you to know I have your back. And I'll be there for you.”

“When the rain starts to pour,” Kurt says tiredly.

“Yeah,” Finn says. “I know my shirt doesn't match your usual style, but it sorta felt like that was the point.”

Kurt doesn't want to leave the safety of his duvet, of Finn’s arm tight around his shoulder like an anchor. But the clock is ticking, and school cometh unwarranted.

He takes a deep, exhausting breath and hauls himself to his feet.

“Thank you,” he says. Finn smiles in a way no one else has ever managed, disarming and earnest and just a tad naive.

“Of course, man,” he says. “We're family. It's what we do, right?”

* * *

Kurt sits in the bathroom on the floor, wearing Finn’s shirt and his hoodie zipped, for eight minutes.

Finn knocks.

“We should go in five,” his disembodied voice says.

“Okay,” he replies.

Footsteps walk away.

His body weighs a thousand pounds. He heaves himself upright and glares into the mirror.

“Make no shit,” he tells his reflection. “But take no shit, either.”

His reflection nods.

The shirt is only a little too big on him, but the hoodie swallows him up, and it's exactly what he wants. Hopefully no one slushies him; he would never get over the guilt of ruining this sweater.

It's warm and safe and smells like Finn, and for a blinding moment Kurt feels like family.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! My tumblr is [@vivilevone](http://vivilevone.tumblr.com) so come hit me up anytime.


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